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156 John Minto. finest soil of Mill Creek bottoms which is carried into the main river and by that toward tide flow, to be contended with by costly dredging. We must recognize that in the entire drainage of the great rivers of the West, thousands of such streams are not only bordered by plowed fields, but that irrigation water is forced through an annually increasing area of it. It will be seen that the prevention of waste by washing out the finer portion of the soil demands plans for the prevention of bleaching out, as well as means of flooding ; and further reflection will per- haps lead to a truer cause of the great extents of Asia being now barren wastes than the cutting off of the timber, if there ever was any: viz., the continuous taking of crops without rest or return to the soil, and continuous bleaching out. One, if not more, of Israel's Phrophets told them the time would come "When the land would enjoy her Sabbath," and it did. Just so has every irrigated country slowly become a waste; but it is not the lack of trees, as the valley of the lower Nile is an everlasting witness; for it gets the silt, the richness of the wash, from Abbyssinian highlands. While the writer is well aware that with sufficient water at command, labor can insure crops without failure by irriga- tion, I think it will be found that not less than three times the labor will be required on a given area as compared with dry farming, and with some crops, as sugar beets, much more than that. Then under irrigation loss of fertility is going on by leaching the land as well as by feeding the growing crops. CHAPTER VIII. OUR MOUNTAINS VIEWED AS RESOURCES OF LIFE AS WELL AS OF HEALTH AND RECREATION. In previous chapters I have tried to intimate how an average pair of Oregon home-builders, beginning with hands and hope only, progressed from extremest poverty to a condi- tion of reasonable comfort and independence, when some ailment, never understood, nearly took the most valued life